Stars
by Draikinator
Summary: I was fourteen when Kenny broke. Kyle's PoV, oneshot, no ship.


**Stars**

I was fourteen when Kenny broke. He was fifteen, at the time, his birthday at the start of April. It was May, and a beautiful day. There was snow on the ground, but there's always snow in South Park. But it was warmer than usual, warm enough that I'd shed my usual orange coat for a thinner green hoodie. The sun was out- I could see it from the window.

I'm not sure what set him off. I'll probably always wonder. Like me, he had opted to leave his orange coat at home that day in favor of a soft turtleneck. It wasn't new, certainly, but it wasn't terribly old, either, not like his parka. He had the collar turned up all the way so it covered the bottom half of his face, ever insecure.

He shouldn't have been, he was easily the most handsome boy in school. He'd inherited all the delicate features of his mother. His straw blond hair, so different from his father and sibling's wood-brown and his mother's Irish red fueled the rumor that he was not as much of a McCormick as the other McCormicks. His soft cheekbones and round face, so unlike his father didn't help.

He was vulgar at times, but despite his perverted jokes and intimate knowledge the girls at school loved him. If I, or Stan, or Cartman had behaved the way he did we would have been ostracized for sure. But Kenny McCormick?

Of course, it's a bit of an unfair comparison. Unlike the rest of us, Kenny was compassionate and borderline martyristic. Ever since we were children he had had no reservations about throwing himself in the way of a blade to stop it from reaching someone else. I can't count the amount of times I saw him die so no one else would.

Despite his affinity for being the first casualty of any heroics, he always put a grand effort into staying alive. We used to laugh, watching him scurry away from a sleeping animal screaming, or diving out of the way when someone moved a fork to quickly. We all knew the next day he would be alive and unharmed no matter what misfortune fell him. Of all people, Kenny was the one who should worry the least about death.

So when I was fourteen, wrapped in an unfamiliar orange hoodie and my friend in the seat beside me suddenly began wailing in the middle of a history lesson, I was confused. I couldn't understand why he would just, out of nowhere, with no visible precursor start crying like an infant, gross hacking sobs with tears pouring out of his eyes with his fists clenched tight and white knuckled on his desk as he crumpled over, practically screaming. No one had any reaction at first, we were all too stunned by the sudden outburst. I was the first to speak- I think, if Stan had been sitting next to him, too, he would have asked sooner. Stan was always much more emotionally in tune than I was. When a friend was in the hospital, his life was basically over. He would spend the entire time crying and in complete emotional turmoil. When someone was upset, he couldn't be happy. He was always so empathetic. I didn't have the words to ask him anything, I just said his name, startled.

"I want to die," he cried, and collapsed on his desk, chest heaving with his choking sobs. We all just stared.

It was an unspoken agreement that we would not talk about that day. No one acknowledged it again, but we should have. I want to say we were just children, that we couldn't have known better, but we did. We really did. We chose wrong, knowing it was wrong.

From that day on, Kenny stopped avoiding death. He wasn't killing himself, so much, but when death came for him, he did not run. He didn't dodge forks that moved to quickly in hands, he did not shy away from animals, awake or asleep. When he cross paths with a car, he just closed his eyes and let it hit him. When he fell off a shingled roof, he didn't scramble to grab the gutter or break his fall. He closed his eyes, and fell. When he found his food poisoned, he kept eating. When he fell ill, he waited in bed until he stopped breathing. He just let himself die, over and over, more and more frequently.

With his constant absence, we grew apart. But we all always kept an eye on him, ever worried, even though we pretended we weren't bothered. When I was eighteen, I was all ready for college. Excited and proud, I'd been accepted at my first choice with a scholarship. Cue parental pride. My life was set.

When I was eighteen, all the new graduates were at Token's house for a meteor shower party. When the shower started, and the sky was streaked with brilliant stars flaring across the atmosphere, bright and burning, Bebe stood up and said in a soft voice that we needed to make a wish. And not a silent wish, we had to pick a star, and say it out loud. That if you said your wish out loud, it put it out into the universe and it could come true.

It was sappy, and silly, but we were drunk and happy and the sky was a work of art and Bebe was a pretty girl, so, I stood up first, pointed at a star racing across the sky and said I hoped that when we came back for our ten year reunion, we would all be rich and successful. All except for Cartman. Everyone laughed.

Butters wanted his parents to leave him alone at college. No annoying calls. Craig said he wished he wouldn't ever see any of us again, but he smiled, unusual for him. Wendy said she wished for love. Jimmy wanted to get his big break as a comedian. I'm not sure what Timmy wished for.

Stan stood up next, and in a voice more sober than I was accustomed too, said he wished his parents would divorce and be happy now that he was moving. There was a lot of silence.

Then Tweek stood up and said he wished for an anxiety medication that didn't make him want to kill himself. Clyde wished his parents would accept that he wasn't interested in women. Kevin wished he could know why his biological parents abandoned him.

The floodgates opened by booze and stars it all came pouring out. Everyone's secret fears. Kenny sat in the corner and stared at the stars. His left hand held a beer, and his right hand was semi raised, pinching out meteors as they appeared. He hadn't actually graduated, but Kenny never missed a party.

Stan noticed me staring at him first and followed my gaze. Suddenly, we were all silent, staring at him. He kept pinching stars, until Bebe cleared her throat, and he looked at us, really looked at us, and his hand fell. Bebe said it was his turn. He looked through us, and sighed. The beer touched the ground and stayed there. Kenny swayed to his feet and steped forward, in front of us all, staring at the sky, waiting for a star. The sky was dark.

He must have stood there for minutes, hands raised, staring at dark clouds and waiting for shooting stars that obviously weren't coming. Finally his shoulders went slack and his arms dropped back to his sides. He looked drunk and tired and his knees buckled, and he fell back on his ass. Normally Cartman would have snickered maliciously at him, but the moment was so real, so serious, even he was silent.

I remember it so clearly, so vividly. "That's okay, Kenny," Bebe had said quietly, behind him, behind me, "You can tell us anyway. Let the universe know what you want."

He just stared up at the sky, his face away from us, and he said in a voice so wracked with hurt I wanted to get up and _run_ from it, from him, "I don't want to come back."

There wasn't even a pause. The words tumbled from his mouth like water and he slumped over. He just melted into the grass like silk. I shook him and tried to wake him up, but he wouldn't wake up. No pulse, no breath. Like his spirit had just left his body, right then and there and fled to the stars and the inky darkness above us.

I got my degree. I moved away. Years and years passed, and Kenny stayed dead. His mother stopped calling, begging to know if I'd heard from him. He vanished into the pages of high school yearbooks and unremarkable obituaries.

"I don't want to come back," he had said. And he had not.


End file.
